Shadows
by DarkSkies Stars
Summary: I don't have a summery yet really. Basically, Nico sees a boy in the ocean and he looks pretty dead but he's not. Percy pulls him out and when he wakes up they find the guy is pretty crazy. Please excuse the poor summery, I'd usually do this part later on when I have a better idea of what's happening. My actual writing in the story is better than this summery. Promise.
1. Authors Note

**_An authors note:_****  
****_Hey Guys,_****  
****_Ok, let me explain a few things to start. First of all this doesn't really happen at any particular point in any of the books. I guess that ultimately means its after the kafuffle with Gaia ended but it's not that important. Secondly like the Heroes of Olympus the person who is speaking in the chapter has there name as the chapter title, so if it doesn't quite make sense it could be because you're reading from a different point of view. (By the way the prologue is an exception to that rule.) I'll try not to just write random drabble. I'm not 100% sure where this is going so if you have any ideas just send me a message or comment. Also I don't like interrupting the flow of the story so I won't put in authors notes at the end of a chapter but may put some thing in this Authors note. I don't know._****  
****_Basically just enjoy the story._****  
****_  
DarkSkiesStars_**


	2. Prologue

The waves smashed him against the unforgiving rocks of the cliffs. The coldness chewed him up and spat him out, rendering him useless. He knew he was going to die and there was nothing he could do. As he felt the conscious world slipping from his feeble grasp he thought of how his life had turned. He couldn't remember much, the cold had numbed his mind, but he could remember his sister. Only that morning they had been getting on with their lives . Well, as much as they could.  
After their brother had died, they moved from England to the coast of America to live with their mum's younger brother, who didn't care much for children.  
He missed _his_ brother though. As the ice settled in his muscles, he remembered how, when he and his sister were seven, his mother died leaving his older brother, seventeen at the time, to look after them. If he'd had a dad, he couldn't remember.  
No-one had ever told them how their brother had died, nor had anyone told them about their mother. He didn't care. He didn't care because he _knew _what happened. It was the monsters. The ones that he thought they'd left behind in England.  
When the waves rode up, spinning him round and filling his lungs with icy water, preparing themselves for a deadly blow, he thought about how they hadn't escaped and how he, like his family before, were going to die because of the monsters. He hoped his sister had avoided the same fate as his. The wave reared up and leapt forward, smashing his skull against the solid rock. Then...  
Nothing.


	3. Phoenix I

Nothingness was my world as I wondered through the darkness. Was that even a word? Nothingness. It sounded funny. I floated through darkness and was dimly aware of...Well, nothing. I couldn't see or hear. I couldn't move or speak. Everything was just nothing.  
Wherever I was, time wasn't. The only thing that there was in this darkness was my vague memories of the events that put me there. The monster's claws, the rush of air as I toppled off the cliff, screams, water, rocks, nothing. At least here I had no pain. I was content with my floating.  
Suddenly, something nudged at my conscience. At first, I thought it was just something I had imaged and dismissed it as my mind playing tricks. But then it happened again. It tugged me away from the course I'd been floating and guided me towards something. I knew I was going somewhere as I traveled towards the something and left nothing behind.

The first thing that returned was the burning pain. My head felt like it been run over by a bus, my lungs were on fire and felt mangled and compressed. I was frozen and the ice burnt like nothing I felt before. It hurt so bad, every muscle, every inch of my body was engraved with excruciating, burning pain. It made my mind fuzzy and distracted me from rational thoughts. So much so, I nearly didn't realise that my hearing was regenerating. But a noise, a rush of foot steps, made me some what alert.I still couldn't move my hands but I could feel with them. The floor felt sort of weird, soft but grainy. I deducted that I was lying on sand, maybe a beach? The footsteps grew louder, at a guess I'd say there was at least two people heading this way. There was a shuffling to my left and I realised that there was someone already with me. I tried to open my eyes to see what was going on, but my body refused. Someone came rushing up.  
"Oh my gods!What happened?"  
Monsters happened.  
"I don't know, I just found him in the sea. What do you think he was doing?"  
Well, I wasn't swimming.  
I didn't know who these people were, I'd never heard their voices before. I could tell a little bit about them though, the first one that spoke was clearly female and sounded quite level-headed, but shocked at the same time. The second one was the guy to my left. He was male, obviously,and sounded like a normal teenager.  
" I'll take this boy to the infirmary, one of you needs to get someone from Apollo Cabin,"  
The third person was also male but, unlike the other one, his voice was filled with wisdom. I could tell he was an adult who expected to be listened to. I continued to listen as one of the others ran off at a sprint, leaving me with the remaining two.  
One of them stepped towards me and I wanted to call out to them, tell them to leave me alone, that I was fine. I couldn't, and I defiantly wasn't fine. Strong hands pulled on me, removing me from the floor. Immense pain flooded me, it was much worse than the burning pain before. I mentally struggled trying to fight it, until, at last, it shrouded me, pushing me into unconsciousness one again.


	4. Percy I

I suppose it was sort of a normal day for me. You know, normal stuff, like getting beat at archery and losing a race to a couple of trees. The ground was cold and hard, but because of the protective dome around the camp the snow hadn't got to us yet. After nearly burning my hand off wile watching Leo make one of his gadgets, I decided that actually burning my hand off on the lava wall wasn't something I really wanted to do. I hung out with Conner and Travis for a bit, provoking Clarisse to the point that she nearly impaled me with her spear. After a while I got board and ran towards the beach, leaving the screaming Aphrodite kids, who's hairspray had been replaced by green spray paint, behind. The path down to the ocean had become well worn since I arrived at didn't come this way, usually preferring to be by the lake, but when they did it was often to seek solitude. I sprinted at a high speed down to the beach. Stopping was a slight problem, the speed that I was going meant I skidded before tripping and face planting into the hurt, but I had stopped. Standing up, I spat the sand out of my mouth and brushed it from my hair. When I'd got the sand out my eyes and lifted my head so I had a view of things other than the floor, I noticed Nico sitting a couple feet away under one of the few trees that lined the beach.  
He was one of those people who turned up when you least expected him. Still, I wasn't that surprised to see him there. Nico liked to be by himself and it was pretty noisy up at the cabins. Like I said before, people came here for solitude.  
"What are you doing?" He asked me, frowning at the way I was spitting the sand out.  
"Running, I guess. You know stuff," I replied, trying to avoid the fact that I was partly involve in the hairspray incident. Nico'd hear about that later anyway, but I figured he didn't need to know at that moment. "Can I sit with you?"  
I walked towards the tree until I was standing right next to it.  
"No," Nico turned back to look at the ocean, "you can't,"  
I sat down anyway. Nico kinda hated me but I figured that he was too isolated from the people around him and I thought that wasn't a good thing. He looked at me and scowled.  
"What do you want? I thought I told you to go away,"  
"No," I said innocently, "you told me not to sit here,"  
"Then why are you?"  
"Because I want to,"  
He gave the evils and shuffled away a little.  
I lay down In the sand, undoing the work I'd put into getting the stuff out my hair, and sighed.  
After a while the awkward silence stared to kill me so I opened my mouth to speak but Nico got there before me.  
"What's that in the water?"  
Squinting my eyes against the hash sunlight I sat up trying to figure out what he was on about.  
"Where?"  
I couldn't see anything except the ocean.  
"Over there," Nico explained waving his hand in a general direction, " It's alive, I can feel it, I think it's a person,"  
Nico leapt to his feet and ran to the edge of the water, close enough to have a view of whatever it was but not close enough for the lapping waves to touch him.  
"Percy, come here!"  
Unsure of what he was doing or what he expected me to do I jogged slowly to him.  
He pointed out to the water. At first I couldn't see the person but I shielded my eyes from the sun and my vision came into view. Sure enough in the water, about a hundred meters out was a person floating on the waves. I wasn't too sure if they were actually alive but I let Nico have the better judgement on that front.  
"We've got to help them," Nico said looking at me.  
I got the point a walked out into the sea. The ocean got quite deep quite quickly but being who I was it felt no different than walking on the shore. As I got closer to the person I realised that it was a boy not much younger than myself. He didn't look too good. I took him back to the shore and pulled him up onto the sand, not to far incase he we in pain, but far enough that the water couldn't reach him. I turned to Nico but he was already scrambling up the path back to camp.  
"I'm getting Chiron!" he shouted as he disappeared around the corner.  
I wasn't really sure what to do so I stood there trying to avoid looking at the boy. My day _was _normal but I often found that normal wasn't something that liked me.


	5. Echo I

I watched my brother fall off the cliff. Down and down, until I couldn't see him any more. The monster turned to look at me. I didn't know what it wanted or why it killed Phoenix but I knew I was next. We had tried to get rid of the monsters after they killed Mum and Arron. We moved to America to live with our uncle, whom we'd never met before, and thought that would be the end of of was, till now.  
The monster was horrible, nothing like the ones that were in England. It's legs were different from each other, one looked like a snake and the other covered in fur.  
"Why?" I screamed, tears running down my face, "What do you want?"  
"To kill you," it hissed back, "If I can't kill Percy Jackson I'll kill his friends instead!"  
Percy Jackson? I'd never even heard his name before, let alone been his friend. I'd never really had any proper friends apart from my family.  
As the monster slowly came towards me, hissing and taunting, I closed my eyes, thinking about how I wished there was something I could have done to save the last person who truly understood me.  
I waited for it to kill me, listing to the agonizingly slow, stumbling steps advance. Suddenly, something whooshed narrowly over my head. I heard a dull thud and a scream from the monster before I felt a sprinkle of dust fall onto my face. Terrified of what I would find, I slowly opened my eyes. The monster had vanished and in its place was a pile of sparkling golden dust. A branch snapped behind me and quickly turned, afraid that it was another wasn't. On the edge of the forest, crouching amongst the undergrowth, was a fairly small, innocent looking white wolf. It came towards me. I flinched and fell backwards. I ended up sitting on the floor facing the tree line. I was still crying with tears cascading down my face when teenager with a bow emerged. A couple of moments later more girls in white dresses and bows followed her out. The first girl came up to me and kelt down so see could look into my eyes.  
"It's ok now," she explained "It's gone, won't come back for some time. My name's Thalia, come with us there may be othetr monsters nearby."  
I stood up, my legs shaking. Thalia took my arm and led me away from the cliff edge and towards the forest. I followed in a daze, not knowing what would become of my life from then on.


	6. Phoenix II

Lots of colours. Colours are pretty. They move around in front of my eyes, blurring together and making funny nosies. I should be dead, I know that, but for some reason I'm not.  
I feel like I'm floating but I know I'm not because I can feel the soft sheets of a bed beneath me. That's weird, I don't remember going home. In fact, I don't remember anything. I mean... wait...No, I definitely remember my name and that I'm fifteen years old and something else about a girl with black hair and brown eyes that I couldn't put my finger on. I knew she was important to me but what was it? It didn't shine any light on my current situation.  
I was panicking because I had no idea what happened to me or were I was and I was shocked that I had forgotten key facts about my life. I couldn't recall where I lived, what my family looked like or if I even if I had one.  
The colours still swam around in front of me but slowly they were coming into focus and the noises became audible as people's voices. I needed to get away from wherever here was, it was too noisy and subconsciously I knew there was something I didn't want them to know but I couldn't remember what that was either.  
After my vision had cleared enough for me to distinguish the walls from people, I shakily tried to push myself up.  
"Whoa, where do you think you're going?" a boy with blond hair said, pushing me gently back down,"You can't get up yet. I'm gonna get Chiron."  
I watched him wander off mumbling to himself about something that I wasn't really interested in.  
I pushed myself up again and carefully studied my surroundings. I seemed to be in some sort of hospital. There were beds lining the walls and in them were ill and injured looking people. I didn't know why,but every second I sat there looking around a feeling of dread grew in my stomach. I had to get out.  
Slowly, making sure there were no doctors around, I twisted my legs round a stood up. I felt dizzy for a moment before it settled down and I could be on my way. By this point I was sure of one thing; hospitals were bad. I just had this feeling that it wasn't good for me to be in one and that they'ed screwed me over in the past. Who cared? At least I was remembering stuff.  
Nobody stopped me as I walked through the door and out into the big wide world.


	7. Phoenix III

I smiled down at the people who were gathered around my cabin. Well... It wasn't my cabin, it was someone else's, but I'd decided to sit on the roof. No one looked like they knew what to do. They were all standing around in small groups whispering between themselves and occasionally giving me glances. I wasn't fazed that they were all kids or that loads of them were carrying around dangerous looking weapons, I'd learnt earlier that this was a summer camp for kids of the gods, by listening in on their conversations.  
I noticed two people pushing themselves to the front of the crowd. The small guy with black hair and a strange looking black sword glared up at me with an expression that made the mood darken slightly. I'd of be frightened of him if it wasn't for the fact that it was kinda funny to see a kid have such an angry expression. He also had a very stylish skull ring which made me smile more, I don't know why.  
"Hey you!," The kid yelled "What'd you think you're doing on my roof?! Do you know how much trouble you've caused?"  
I shifted so I was crouched on the edge of the roof .  
"Oh, I'm sorry," I said innocently, my grin not faltering for a second, "was I the one you guys were looking for?"

After I'd discharged myself from their hospital, I'd somehow caused a major panic. At first I was unaware and was happily taking myself for a little walk but I hadn't gone far before shouts became audible from the 'infirmary',as they called it.  
"Has anyone seen the guy with black hair who was that bed like five minuets ago?"  
I stopped for a moment, hiding a smile. I was quite well concealed where I was standing, there was a bush thing between me and the door of the building, but I crouched down anyway.  
"What? The dead one that Percy brought in?"  
"He wasn't dead you doofus!"  
"Well he should have 'bin,"  
"We gotta find him, I won't look good I let a severely injured person walk out of the infirmary when I was meant to look after him, lets go get the others,"  
I didn't like the sound of that. Severely injured? I didn't feel severely injured but that could wait for later. Right now I had to avoid being found, while I did some looking of my own. It hadn't escaped my attention that more than a few of the people I'd seen walk pass had shiny, sharp swords strapped to themselves. Not to mention they were all kids, some even younger than me.  
I cautiously stood up and causally walked to a nearby cabin. I found the layout of this place a bit bazar, the hospital was extremely close to all the other buildings. All the cabins were in a circle type shape surrounding a big fire. The inner circle consisted of twelve large cabins but there were many more surrounding them. I walked around the front of the cabin that was directly ahead of where I'd come from. It had Apollo written above the door and had a bow and arrow mounted above that.  
"Are you the person everybody's looking for?"  
Startled, I turned around to see a little girl, no older than seven, standing behind me. She must have been very quiet for me not to notice her. She looked at me for a second before shouting out to someone I couldn't see.  
"Will! He's over here!"  
I didn't stick around long enough to find out who Will was. I sprinted away towards a woodland area I could see beyond the cabins. I was slightly aware of people following me but they weren't too close. I wove around the buildings, there were loads of them some of them were big and some not so much. When I reached the last cabin before the forest I sped up slightly. For the short distance between the cabins and forest, about fifty metres, I was at a full sprint. I attempted a running leap at the tree closest to me. My hands scrabbled to get a grip on the lowest and for a panicked moment I thought I was going to fall. I got a hold a pulled my self up on to the branch. I could hear the people who were chasing me shouting to each other, they weren't far off now. I had two choices, I could hand myself in or hide it out. What did I know?  
I didn't know what was going on.  
I was being chased by a bunch of kids.  
The kids all had weapons.  
I was supposedly injured but didn't feel any pain.  
I could jump two and a half metres into the air.  
And last but by no means least, I was in a camp for the kids of the Greek Gods. I knew that now. They weren't very secretive about it. Especially the little group that had just entered the forest and were dangerously close to my hiding place.  
"I recon that kid could be a Hermes kid, did you see how fast he was. I mean he completely lost us," the first kid said.  
"What about Hecate? He kinda disappeared,"  
"Na...I'm putting a bet on Athena, those guys are smart. It'd be easy to get away if you were one of her kids,"  
"He couldn't be Athena, he had dark hair,"  
They continued to walk into the forest, sharing their theories and squashing the others at the same time.  
I pulled myself further up into the tree and found a spot where I could be comfortable and see what was going on in the camp without being seen myself.  
Some time passed. Up in the tree I witnessed many things. More people came into the forest searching for me, goat things, tree things, a horse-man but more than any thing else Demi-gods passed beneath me.  
"Annabeth, come on. Why are we doing this? The guy's gone already," exclaimed one very agitated looking boy.  
"Shut up Malcolm. We're doing it 'cuz Chiron said and plus Percy said that we should. He seemed worried." Annabeth replied.  
"But don't you think it's a bit excessive to send out loads of people to look for one person who's evidently not as injured as Will was saying,"  
"It's not only that," Annabeth sighed, turning to face Malcolm "Chiron says that he could be powerful. If we just left him it could be dangerous, for him and for us. He could get killed by monsters or something else, I don't know,"  
A horn sounded, cutting their conversation off. I didn't know what it meant but it made the other kids head back towards the camp.  
Soon everyone who had passed by earlier was walking back towards the camp. I heard snippets of conversation about food and dinner and guessed that everyone was returning for lunch. As soon as I was absolutely sure that no one else was coming, I jumped down from the tree. I looked back up at where I had come from, I was still surprised that I could jump that high.  
Sticking close to the cabin walls, I went in search for things to eat. The first cabin was the strangest thing ever. There was make-up spread over most of the dressing tables and all the clothes, which were neatly folded, had designer labels. As I passed a mirror I stopped and glanced at my reflection.  
Oh God! My Head!  
I had a huge gash from the bridge of my nose all the way up to my hair line just above the outside corner of my left eyebrow. When I say huge I mean flipping gigantic. I could hardly see the left side of my face as it was covered in my blood. My hair was matted together with the stuff and I swear I could almost see my skull. I must have had one hell of an accident, it made me sick to look at myself. It looked like I'd stepped out of a murder film with me being the victim.  
My heart was pounding and my mind was racing but the only clear thoughts that I could conjure were; What the hell happened to me? Why didn't it hurt?  
Why wasn't I dead?  
Carefully, slowly and tenderly, I reached my hand up to touch my wound. Stopping a few millimetres short, I thought again how it was possible to survive something this grim. My skull was totally cracked along the gash, or at least I thought it was. I took a deep breath and gently placed my hand down. I felt no pain. The blood was dry, it felt rough and crumbly beneath my finger tips. I brushed a little bit of the dried stuff away from the open cut. Again I felt no pain but it did prompt a small trickle of fresh blood to make it's way into my eye. I placed my hand back down to stop any further blood from escaping.  
I was freaked out, scared and confused. I had no idea what was going on but I had been thrown in the deep end however I looked at it. I don't want to look like this,I thought I want to know what happened, I want to remember my life.  
"I WANT THIS STUPID CUT GONE!" I shouted to myself. It made me sick, angry and confused. I closed my eyes and composed myself. It was the root of my problems and it caused me to lose my composure, I needed to get a grip and I needed to get rid of this stupid, stupid cut.  
Slowly, opened my eyes.  
"Holy...!"  
I stumbled back and stared at my reflection in shock.  
My hand...There was a thin black mist circling its way around my hand and wrist. But that wasn't all, before, when my had was at my head the mist had been touching the gash. What had me so shocked and so surprised was the fact that my wound had become smaller. Not by much,but it was noticeable, the part at the bridge of my had healed and the cut now started above the inside corner of my eye.  
I placed my hand back onto the wound and once again the mist touched the cut. I watched in awe as it spread itself along the broken bone and skin, slowly but surely fixing the bone and stitching the skin until the only trace of the injury was the dried blood left behind. I stared at the mirror until the mist thinned and disappeared.  
It didn't take long to proses the new information on my abilities and soon I found myself checking my body for other wounds and fixing them without a problem. I found that I could summon my healing mist just by thinking about it, a very useful ability.  
Time move a lot quicker after that. I found some clean clothes and washed my face of the excess blood, I couldn't do much about my hair. In a cabin with a flying shoe on the door I found some food a bottle of Cola and an empty rucksack I could stuff it all in. The next place I came to had some sort of dedication to owls. There wasn't much of intrest in there, just a few maps and book spread around. I turned out a whole bookcase, leaving the contence spread on the floor. A book on the top of the pile caught my attention. It had a shiny black cover and had greek myths written across the front. I put it in my bag, figuring it would be useful considering my situation.  
I chucked a few other books in too, never knew when I would get bored. I visited a couple of other cabins and found some more food and a neat looking dagger but apart from that I didn't take anything, just made a mess looking.  
It wasn't long before I noticed a small number of people wandering around having finished their lunch.  
I swiftly moved in the opposite direction. I ended up heading back towards the forest. I didn't really want to go back in there, I wanted to found. I didn't want to be found easily though. I needed answers, I couldn't just hand myself in, it'd make me seem weak and if I'd learnt anything today it was that I was anything but. I made up my mind and lobbed my bag up onto the roof of the cabin that was closest to the forest and slightly separate from the rest. It was quite cool, if you asked me. It was made of black bricks and had a couple of bones or something here and there. There was a skull above the door, not that I payed much attention to it.  
I looked up at the roof and calculated how I was going to get up. The edge of the roof was at least three metres off the ground. The roof was made if tiles and was built at a slanted angle. I figured I'd give my physical capability a test and opted to try my running jump again. The worst that could happen was missing and falling, even then any injuries were easily dealt with. I did a successful jump and found myself hanging of the edge. Forcing my foot into a gap in the bricks I hauled myself up and was soon sitting on the top of the cabin. I looked over the edge, cool. Happy with myself I sat back and waited for the inevitable.

**A/N: I know what I said about author notes but I wanted to say a few things. **

**1) I'm setting up a poll about who Phoenix's parent should be so please vote. I want to know what you think.**

**2) Please, please review. I know it's said on every other story out there but it would really help if people could tell me what's good and what could be improved.**

**3) Thank you all so much for reading this. It's my my first fanfiction so it's nice to know people are interested.**


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